A woman in a formal white gown glances sideways, her gaze steady and her expression neutral. A set of hands – the body to whom they belong cropped from the frame – tends to the garment’s draped fabric, as if carefully fitting a wedding dress. To the rear, an older woman rests a weathered hand on the younger woman’s shoulder; the expression she wears is more sombre – a mother preparing to let go of her soon-to-be-married daughter, perhaps? Where a palette of black, w…

What could be more simple and more complex, more obvious and more profound than a portrait? - Charles Baudelaire The human urge to immortalize its likeness is as old as the emergence of civilization: the Ancient Greek immortalized important figures in marble and stone, where Ancient Egyptian portraiture flourished from about 5,000 years ago. Before the invention of photography, painting, sculpting, and drawing were the only ways to record someone’s appearance. However, po…

The Ravestijn Gallery is delighted to announce "The Constructed Image", a group exhibition that brings together almost twenty (inter)national and experimental artists who showcase photography’s ability to not only reproduce but also be a source for something new. From Hannah Höch’s violent photomontages to Martha Rosler’s political juxtapositions, collage and its successors have constructed meaning through intervention; disassembling, reassembling, cu…

“What is this?” or “Something doesn’t make sense here” are often heard reactions on the photos of Anuschka Blommers & Niels Schumm. In their work the photographic duo intends to put the viewer off balance. In ‘Delusions’, The Ravestijn Gallery presents a selection of thirteen optical illusions from the oeuvre of Blommers & Schumm wherein confusion is omnipresent. A recent series of four misleading stills for the erotic paperback…